


Red Red Red

by spire_cx



Series: Perfect, Imperfect [2]
Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Painplay, Piercings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spire_cx/pseuds/spire_cx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a man helps Hoya understand the nature of Dongwoo's devotion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Red Red

The man is younger than Hoya was expecting: late twenties maybe, tall and dark and phlegmatic, all in black. He's handsome but only casually, his good looks inert, everyday, and non-threatening. His words are short and blunt and commanding but his voice is concerned and calm—Hoya decides he likes him, which, as he admits it to himself, makes him feel a little lightheaded.

They sit in his stark modern living room to confirm their goals and review the prearranged list of rules and limits. Hoya sits in silence, hands folded in his lap as the man asks about latex allergies and whether Dongwoo has taken any blood-thinners today. He reiterates his policies about observers and reassures them of the confidentiality of this "transaction." He even requests Hoya's explicit permission to touch Dongwoo, which Hoya gives willingly, not realizing the implications of the question until after he's answered it.

Dongwoo sits perfectly still through this conversation. Somewhere between the street and this room he's slipped away—or, perhaps more accurately, slipped back. All his animation and optimism and decency are in scraps across the floor; he sits here composed, collected, in control of his body, looking raw and crude and impure, lips gleaming cherry-red and a quiet and confident intensity simmering behind his gaze.

Hoya watches him. He watches the natural sheen on his eyelids and the dark thick of his lashes beneath. He watches his hands lying on his thighs. He watches his shoulders, imagining the shape of them beneath his clothes.

Something inside Hoya twists, stabs, aches. It's stupid, ridiculous, terrifying, and almost funny.

He barely registers the end of the conversation. They stand; Dongwoo pulls a bright white envelope from his pocket and, bowing, hands it to the man, whose name Hoya suddenly does not care to recall.

He leads them down a high-ceilinged hallway to a large, open room in the back of the house. Nearly empty, warmly-lit, and spotless, it has rich wooden floors and paneling, and one wall of floor-to-ceiling plate glass that looks out on a garden of juniper overgrown with honeysuckle and yellowed grape vines. Near the window are two small white medical cabinets on wheels, a matching stool, and a massage table draped in white. There is one black chair, wide and low and looking straight from a posh hotel lobby, positioned in the center of the room.

The man tells them to make themselves comfortable, casts Dongwoo a knowing glance, and leaves.

Hoya sits in the chair and watches Dongwoo pull off his shirts, layer by layer and with all the formality of a six-year-old getting ready for a bath. Once topless he takes off his socks, and pauses for a moment to consider his belt.

"Are you okay?" Hoya asks. He half-hopes he'll say no.

Dongwoo looks up, face expressionless and eyes unreadable. "Yeah."

Hoya sighs and looks down at his hands.

"You trust him?"

Dongwoo tilts his head. "Well," he says, "you're here."

He takes off his belt.

The man returns shortly thereafter, and Dongwoo lies down.

"Good," the man says. He looks up at Hoya. "Let's begin."

The man pulls latex gloves on with a leathery snap and places one hand in the center of Dongwoo's bare chest, where the white of the glove is stunning against his honey-milk skin.

"Relax," he says.

Dongwoo takes a deep breath, and the rasp of air in his throat is clearly audible in the silent, empty room. 

The man begins with antiseptic, wiping down Dongwoo's skin with a light, cautious touch. His hands move slowly and carefully in a soothing caress that Hoya finds himself unable to look away from. Dongwoo sighs, and Hoya's arms prickle with the feeling of goosebumps rising along his flesh.

The man laughs a little, low and melodious. "Your nipples are cute. They'll look good with rings in them."

He pulls a pair of surgical clamps from a tray on top of the cabinet.

"Right one first," he says, and it's not a question.

Dongwoo exhales heavily when the cold metal touches his skin. The man squeezes the clamps tight around his right nipple until the latch snaps into place. Dongwoo's lips part and his cheeks flush a sudden pink.

Hoya's heart is doing doubletime in his chest. He watches Dongwoo's eyes as he watches the man pull a needle—intimidatingly thick and glinting in the light—from a package.

"Don't look," he says.

Dongwoo glances at Hoya, the determination in his eyes heart-stopping, before leaning back and looking out the window, at the withered vines underlit by the starry Seoul night.

Hoya's stomach is suddenly in knots. They're actually doing this, aren't they? His pulse is pounding in his ears; he's struck by the desire to tell the man to wait, to rescind his permission altogether, or, perhaps most realistically, to stand up and walk out: on this, on everything.

He won't, of course. He can't. He doesn't want to.

"Take a deep breath in," the man says.

Dongwoo's chest expands under the man's gloved hand. He lines the needle up with the eye of the clamps, and Hoya steels himself against the urge to look away. 

"And exhale."

He pushes the needle in. Dongwoo's breath goes out in a rush; his eyes squeeze shut, his mouth falls open. He gasps, and then moans, the sound of a man in unquestionable pain. Hoya feels a little dizzy, a little nauseous, his heart fluttering in his throat for an excruciating moment—but the needle exits almost as soon as it enters, and when it does Dongwoo exhales with a grunt.

The man fetches the jewelry and pulls it through the fresh opening in Dongwoo's flesh. Dongwoo is breathing hard, deep, purposeful, concentrated breaths. He opens his eyes but chooses not to look down: he's staring off into the garden, his eyes glazed over and his gaze unfocused.

"There. Beautiful," the man says, removing the clamps.

Hoya realizes his own hands are shaking.

"Next one?" the man asks.

"Yeah," Dongwoo says.

Hoya notices a bead of blood forming on the new piercing, around the barbell where it lances the skin. For a long moment the blood pools and pools, glistening wine-dark in the light. Suddenly, it breaks free; already thick with clot, it rolls slowly down Dongwoo's chest. All the hair on Hoya's neck stands on end at the sight of it. This is the blood that drives him, racing in his veins and throbbing in his cock and burning beneath his bruises. This is the blood that Dongwoo wants him to draw, just like this, tiny droplets from pinpricks in the skin. The thought of it crashes over him: the iron tang dull and heavy in the air, the white bedsheets speckled with dark stains, his slippery, bloodied hands moving over his body.

The man wipes the blood away, leaving a vulgar red smear across Dongwoo's breast. Hoya sits, stares, reeling, dizzy and drunk and _scared_.

The man lays a hand on Dongwoo's arm.

"You're okay?" he asks.

"Yeah."

Again the cleaning, again the clamps, again the needle, pulled from its sheath. The man presses the tip against Dongwoo's skin, just barely touching, just enough to make Dongwoo's hands curl into fists. Hoya imagines the sensation of the tip of a needle dragging across his flesh. His heart hammers in his chest at the thought; he imagines the needle in his hand and Dongwoo's body below and something deep, deep inside him churns painfully.

"Deep breath in," the man instructs, "and out."

The first piercing was quick, but Hoya swears the second takes much longer. Even from across the room he can see the the needle pushing against Dongwoo's skin from the inside, struggling to break through. Dongwoo curses and makes an obscene noise, of the same timbre and pitch and tone as when he's under the belt and almost gone—and then the needle is out, and he groans in relief. The man slides it through Dongwoo's skin: all the way in and then all the way back out, its passage fluid and smooth.

Hoya squeezes his hands into two tight fists. He squeezes as hard as he can, digging his fingernails deep into his palm. It hurts, it hurts, but it's not nearly enough. 

He tries to imagine the pain: the bright bloom of it arcing across his skin and deep into the marrow of his bones. He thinks about the time he split his lip open on a lamppost. He thinks about the time he cut his finger chopping garlic. He thinks about all the times he let Dongwoo fuck him when he didn't really want it but needed to hurt and took it anyway. He thinks about the ropes that he demands Dongwoo tie too tight. He thinks about the look on Dongwoo's face when he's about to come.

Something inside him twists, stabs, aches.

Right now, Dongwoo's face is frozen in a rictus of suffering. Brows furrowed, mouth open, Hoya knows he's somewhere both far away and very close.

"Good," the man says, moving away from his handiwork.

Dongwoo looks down for the first time, and exhales with a groan.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" the man asks.

Dongwoo takes a deep, centering breath. "No."

He puts a hand on Dongwoo's shoulder. "We're going to move on. You're ready to move on?"

Dongwoo closes his eyes. "Yes."

In the empty room, the sound of sterile packages being torn open echoes around the walls. The man holds a needle up for Hoya to see: smaller than the first two, but somehow more menacing.

"I want you to keep breathing," the man says as he leans over Dongwoo's body. He strokes up and down the center of Dongwoo's chest with his free hand, touch featherlight. "Deep, steady breaths."

He presses his fingers into Dongwoo's left collarbone, and stretches out the skin until it's taught over the bone and muscle beneath.

"Breathe," the man whispers.

He lays the needle flat against Dongwoo's skin and pushes.

Dongwoo shouts, cursing, voice pitched high and desperate. The sound is like a shot in the night, straight to Hoya's gut, and it feels so real that he puts his hand against his stomach, feeling for the bullet hole. The man takes his time sliding the needle slowly through the flesh: Dongwoo's toes curl and uncurl, his fingers dig into the leather of the table, and the string of obscenities falling from his lips increases in volume and intensity as the needle digs further and further under his skin.

When it finally breaks through again Dongwoo inhales sharply and tosses his head back and forth like a drowning man thrashing about for air. Hoya too is gasping, heart racing and pulse pounding in his ears. It feels like things are falling out of him, his guts being pulled from the hole in his stomach like thread from a spool, hand over hand and unraveling on the floor.

The man puts a hand on Dongwoo's hair, petting him fondly.

"Shh. It's okay," he says. "Just keep breathing. The faster we go the better it feels."

The second needle mirrors the first. Dongwoo seems more prepared for this one, his only sound a groan that trails off into a wordless whimper and makes Hoya's cock twitch in his pants. When the needle is through Dongwoo slams a fist against the table.

Directly below the first, the third needle goes smoothly, Dongwoo's only reaction a breathy moan through parted lips. The fourth follows suit; by the fifth he seems to hardly feel them and takes the rest with ease, eyelashes fluttering when the man runs his fingers lightly over, between, and around the ridges in his flesh where the needles are buried.

By the eighth needle, the man is running out of room for more. After the tenth he leans back to assess the body in front of him. He glances up at Hoya, his gaze pointed.

Hoya's mind is blank like a beach made smooth by the tide. All his comforting _reasons_ have been swept out to sea: in the end they were made of little more than sticks and sand. Around him, things in the room seem to be loosing their tethers to the earth and floating up into the air: the needles, the clamps, Dongwoo's clothes in their neat pile on the cabinet. His vision is going dark, though he knows not why, or with what: shock, arousal, terror, fury.

The man bends down to speak in Dongwoo's ear.

"Dongwoo," he says, his voice low and even and smooth. "You're being a very, very good boy. You're taking it so well."

He trails a finger down the piercings and Dongwoo's brow twitches. 

"You like taking it for Howon, don't you? Taking the pain for him?"

There's a long pause. Dongwoo moans, the sound deep and strangled.

Hoya's head is suddenly heavy, an anvil on his shoulders; his blood is doing strange things in his veins and it feels like he's sinking, swirling quickly down into a whirlpool wide and deep and inescapable.

"Yes," Dongwoo says, his voice little more than air.

The man flicks at the ends of the needles, one by one in agonizing succession until Dongwoo is panting.

"Why don't you tell him that? Tell him how much you love doing this for him."

Dongwoo turns toward Hoya. His eyes are wet and red and dark with emotion but his expression is peaceful and serene, and Hoya knows he's gone, broken, shattered.

"Howon, I—"

He chokes on his words, but Hoya doesn't need to hear them. "I know," Hoya says, "I know."

And suddenly he _does_ know.

For years he's seen only through smoke. The pieces of their puzzle were vague and fuzzy and dim, their final shape obscure and difficult to define.

But there's a breeze coming in from the ocean now, cool and crisp and heady. The fog clears and the valley opens up and everything drains out of him as he sees the spread of their pieces across the ground, like so many fragments of a shattered vase whose long-forgotten figure he can finally recall.

He tries to breathe but the air catches in his throat, dry and tight. He clenches his fists until his knuckles begin to crack and pop.

"It's okay," Hoya says. "You're perfect. I love you."

Dongwoo closes his eyes and turns away, into the man's hands, waiting to cradle him as he starts to sob.

Hoya's heart wrenches in his chest at the sound but it feels so good, so gratifying, like knots being pulled free and rusted-shut doors being broken open. All the words he didn't know he had are spilling over in his hands: direction, devotion, constancy, gravity.

The man is holding Dongwoo's hands in both of his own as Dongwoo cries into his shirt. He leans down, puts his lips to Dongwoo's ear.

"Do you want more?" he asks.

"Anything," Dongwoo says, breathless, "anything."

"Anything Howon wants?"

"Yes," he gasps, "please, yes."

The man looks up at Hoya. In his eyes are a thousand possibilities and a million futures.

"I want..." Hoya says, his voice cracking open on the words. "I just want to go home with you, hyung."

Dongwoo whines, burying his face against the man's stomach.

"Thank you," he says, gasping, "thank you, thank you, thank you."

The tips of Hoya's fingers are burning with need. He wants to walk with him in the street; he wants to kiss him in the elevator; he wants to shower him with gifts and drive off with him to somewhere far away. He wants to make love to him in his bed, surrounded by his things, fucking him open and open and _open_.

Hoya is his, and his alone, and the realization is staggering, heartbreaking, and final.

They are still and quiet for a long time. The man lets Dongwoo's sobbing peter out, soothing him through it with whispered words of encouragement.

"We're not done yet, beautiful," he eventually says. "These have to come out."

Dongwoo is still breathing hard, taking big lungfuls of air as if he's just run a marathon. "Okay," he pants, "okay."

He lets go of the man's hands and wipes the tears from his eyes with the heels of his palms.

"You're okay," the man says. He runs his hand down the center of Dongwoo's chest, down his stomach, and back up again. "Just tell me when you're ready."

Dongwoo heaves a sigh. "I'm ready."

"Okay."

Dongwoo winces when the man sprays antiseptic over his chest.

"I want you to take deep, steady breaths. Just concentrate on how it feels here, okay?" He wiggles one of the needles back and forth; Dongwoo makes an incredible sound that makes sparks travel all the way from the top of Hoya's head to the tips of his toes.

"Yeah."

The man removes the needles in the same order he placed them, and just as quickly. Bloodstream still flushed with endorphins, Dongwoo rides out the waves of pain like a well-practiced expert. By the end, his chest is speckled with blood as it seeps from the tiny holes dotting his skin.

After the needles have all been removed the man wipes Dongwoo's skin down again, thorough, cautious, caring. Hoya can see Dongwoo's breath evening out, his chest rising and falling at a slow, steady pace.

"There," the man says, wiping the last of the blood from Dongwoo's skin. "We're all done."

He pulls his gloves off with a snap and puts a hand, dusty and white with powder, on Dongwoo's shoulder. "You're okay?"

"Yes," Dongwoo says, looking up into his eyes. "Thank you."

The man smiles.

"Take as long as you need."

As soon as he's left the room, Hoya stands. He can't cross the space to Dongwoo's side fast enough; Dongwoo sits up and crushes him into an embrace. His nails dig into Hoya's back, he's squeezing Hoya's chest so tightly it's difficult to breathe, and it's like they've never touched, like they've been waiting for years and years, yearning for centuries over distances unfathomable.

"Hyung," Hoya says, and it's all he can say, the only word he has left, all the others floating past him like fragments of broken teacups tumbling to the bottom of the sea.

"Thank you," Dongwoo sobs, "thank you."

They stay there for a long time, Dongwoo's head on his chest, Hoya tracing long shapes across Dongwoo's shoulders.

He helps Dongwoo button his shirt and buckle his belt: he's still shaking too hard to be able to do it himself, though Hoya's not exactly composed either. 

The man is waiting for them in the living room. He hands them their coats, one in each hand, smiling an understanding smile.

Dongwoo is putting on his shoes when the man takes Hoya by the arm and pulls him to the side.

"Don't hesitate to call me if you need anything," he says, voice low and soft.

He pulls a business card from his back pocket. Hoya takes it and looks up into the man's opalescent hazel eyes, gleaming with sincerity.

He puts a hand on Hoya's shoulder. "Take care of him. He's counting on you."

"Thanks," Hoya stutters. "I will."

"Howon?"

Hoya turns. Dongwoo is waiting for him, arms wrapped tightly around himself as if fending off the cold.

Hoya goes to him and puts a hand against the small of his back.

The man opens the door for them.

Outside, the night is dark, cool, and foggy.


End file.
